Director, Finance and Administration Knowledge and Support Center

University of Chicago • Chicago, IL

7d

About The Position

Under the leadership of the Executive Director, the Director ensures that the Support Center provides seamless, integrated cross-functional service in the areas of procure-to-pay, payroll, human resources (HR), budgeting, research administration, general accounting, and other financial and HR transactions to all University constituents. The Director will collaborate with the Executive Director and colleagues, leading the development of a knowledge repository, along with development and implementation of service delivery mechanisms, such as knowledge base articles, service scripts, chatbots, and other artificial intelligence tools, to optimize employee knowledge sets and service delivery. The Director is responsible for tracking and reporting the effectiveness of all services provided by the Tier 1 Support Center and Tier 2 and 3 functional and technical teams that report under other central process and IT teams, as well as ensuring continuous improvement of policies, procedures, and practices. The Director for the F&A Support Center is a member of the Finance and Administration Division’s cross-functional services team reporting to the Executive Director for Client Service Management and Service Optimization. The Director manages the relationship between the Support Center, F&A Division leaders, central process owners, campus partners, subject matter experts, and its clients, including third party vendors, applicants, staff, and faculty. This position is responsible for identifying and implementing continuous improvements across the Support Center in order to respond to client needs and requests.

Requirements

• Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
• Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 7+ years of work experience in a related job discipline.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrated ability to define, deliver, and measure improvement in a primary administrative or operational support function.
• Demonstrated leadership of service organizations.
• Demonstrated supervisory/team leadership experience of transactional staff.
• Background working with multiple administrative or support functions within a complex organization.
• Background collaborating with various stakeholders in an academic or academic health setting.
• Strong management, leadership, and communication skills.
• Foster collaboration and partner with others.
• Proven record of acting on guidance or recommendations to improve service quality.
• Clear focus on client service.
• Excellent written and oral communications skills.
• Proficiency with analysis of financial, human capital, and business process data.
• Successfully complete initiatives supported by rigorous analytics.
• Proven record of working independently, exercising sound judgment, and taking ownership and initiative with minimal direction when needed.

Responsibilities

• Embraces, advocates for, and establishes a foundation for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
• Works across the team to provide the necessary tools, training, and resources to perform their jobs efficiently and effectively.
• Coaches, counsels, mentors, and motivates. Encourages professional development and provides performance management, supervision, and training for all team members with a keen focus on client service and continuous quality improvement.
• Monitors and tracks Support Center performance; provides Support Center performance reports to F&A Division Leadership and central process owners.
• Assists Operational Excellence staff in implementing system to manage and sustain continuous improvement initiatives requiring ongoing review of business processes and metrics.
• Maintains and tracks against key performance indicator (KPI) metrics to identify trends and coordinates with Support Center team members to identify, implement, and track actions to address.
• Works closely with the Executive Director and Operational Excellence leader to communicate KPIs for potential continuous improvement efforts.
• Works closely with the Executive Director and Training and Change Center of Expertise leader to coordinate training for new and continuing Support Center employees and promote training to the wider University community.
• Ensures the Support Center’s operational procedure documentation guides the team's work, decisions, and interactions with the campus community and remains up-to-date with scope of services.
• Reports on continuous improvement efforts, including training opportunities to appropriate groups, such as the Executive Director, Training and Change CoE, and Operational Excellence CoE.
• Develops partnerships and feedback mechanisms with key functional leadership, including those within the central offices supporting University-wide finance, procure-to-pay, human resources, payroll, budgeting and planning, and grants management, to support successful delivery and client satisfaction.
• Ensures accountability for meeting Tier 1 service level agreements and quality performance.
• Develops and executes gathering and responding to opportunities for improvement through feedback surveys and discussions from campus clients.
• Develops partnerships with clients and other key stakeholders to position the Support Center as the go to University first point-of-contact resource for financial and HR administrative services.
• Manages and tracks operational, performance, and compliance reporting.
• Recommends systems of sustained continuous improvement.
• Reviews and updates established business processes and metrics.
• Monitors and ensures organization wide, team, and individual employee metrics to identify trends and coordinates with team leaders to implement and track changes.
• Manages professional staff who assist with knowledge management, document management, performance management, and quality management.
• Creates a learning and development environment for staff.
• Performs other related work as needed.

Benefits

• The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees